A seriously befuddling and beautiful film

Both Joe (my boyfriend) and I wish one of us had written Dana Stevens' review of A Serious Man for Slate. This latest of the Coen films I take to be a replaying of the dilemmas hashed out and never really resolved in the book of Job. Stevens' commentary gets at this, noting that the Coens are "as unforthcoming with their secrets as God is to poor Larry," the movie's protagonist. It's not a film to go into expecting to understand it, but it is a film well worth seeing. And I kind of loved the inscrutability of it, the way in which A Serious Man embodies Larry's growing sense of randomness about his misfortunes."Larry has always considered himself a good man," Stevens writes, "but this convergence of ill fortune throws him into a spiritual crisis. He tries to consult with three rabbis. The youngest (Simon Hellberg) can offer only chipper platitudes, the second (George Wyner) recounts an oft-told and apparently pointless story he calls 'The Goy's Teeth,' and the third, the ancient and venerated Rabbi Marshak (Alan Mandell), refuses to see him."

I think we need these stories, stories told with a sense of perplexity, fate and humor that reflects our efforts to make sense of life.